Obediently Penelope put on the paper dress and went out with the basket. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but snow and pine trees and not the slightest blade of green. As she trudged into the woods, she came across a tiny RV that she’d never seen before; which seemed strange because the group of survivors she was with had been up in these parts for a few months and the roads had become impassible in the past few weeks. Three dwarfs were peering out of it. She bade them good morning and knocked shyly at the door.
“Come in!” they cried in unison. She went in and sat down on the bench to warm herself by their stove and nibble a little at her meager breakfast. “Give us some,” the dwarfs sang in unison.
“Gladly,” Penelope said, not very excited about stale flatbread anyways. She broke her piece in two and gave them half.
“What are you doing out here in the woods in that thin dress in the dead of winter?” they asked.
“I’ve been sent to look for strawberries,” Penelope said. “And I’ve been told not to return until my basket is full.”
When she finished eating, they gave her a scrub brush and a pair of rubber gloves. “Would you mind giving our privy a good scrubbing? We have trouble with the shower in particular and can never get the upper parts very well.”
While she was back in the bathroom, the first dwarf spoke, “What should we give her for being so kind and sharing her bread with us?”
“My gift shall be that make-up kit I found when we were scavenging in that department store,” the second one said.
“My gift shall be this book of poetry so that she may learn and recite the golden speech of the classic poets,” said the third.
“My gift shall be to tell that guy down in the valley that has that entire gated community secured. I mean that dude has it going on: solar panels; a fresh water creek that runs through; the big garden along with a variety of farm animals; and enough people to provide ample security and keep the undead at bay. He would love this girl…I mean she’s an absolute babe. Am I right?”
Penelope did as the three dwarfs had asked. She scrubbed down the bathroom and paid particular attention to the high up and hard to reach places. And when she opened one of the cabinets, what do you think she found? Jars of strawberry preserves. Each one full and you could see huge chunks of strawberry floating in the mixture.
“Go ahead,” one of the trio was standing in the doorway, “we know where to find more. Take all you can carry. Also, we have a little pack for you.”
She loaded up ber basket, then gave each of the little men a hug and slung the pack over her shoulder and ran home to bring her stepmother what she’d asked for.
When she walked in she was happily reciting the golden words of Shakespeare. When she related what had happened in the woods, she couldn’t help but refer back to a few verses of The Bard, because she’d never heard anything quite as lovely as his sonnets.
“Of all the arrogance!” Christina snorted. “Yammering on with a bunch of flowery words.” But in her heart she envied Penelope, and wanted to go out and find that little RV for herself.
“No, no, my darling daughter,” Diedre warned, “it’s too cold, you’d freeze to death.”
But Christina was stubborn. She would give her mother no peace. Eventually, Diedre agreed to let her daughter go. She brought out her finest Columbia Sportswear coat to wear, and gave her sandwiches and one of her last boxes of Twinkies that she kept hidden to take with her.
Christina went to the woods and headed straight for the RV. Again the three dwarfs were peering out, but she didn’t say good morning or so much as smirk politely. Not that that would’ve helped, considering how butt-ugly she was. Withoug a word of greeting she stomped into the RV, sat down by the stove, and began to eat her sandwiches and Twinkies.
“Give us some!” the little men cried out.
“How can I when I haven’t got enough for myself?” Christina said around a mouthful of food.
When she finished eating, they said, “Here’s a broom, go and sweep the snow you’ve tracked in to our home.”
“You’re trippin’!” she exclaimed. “Do your own sweeping. I’m not your maid.”
When she saw they weren’t coming off of any of the good stuff, she went into their bathroom and dropped a bomb, not even bothering to flush afterwards. It was so rank, you could smell it throughout the RV, and even outside for about ten feet or so.
The little men talked it over. The first one said, “What shall we give her for being so horrid and having a wicked, envious heart?”
“Not to mention being greedy and eating that whole box of Twinkies in front of us without sharing,” the second one piped up.
“And how can we overlook how nasty her guts must be,” added the third.
“My gift will be that Tammy Faye make-up kit and how-to book we found in the novelty shop,” said the first.
“Mine will be that politically incorrect joke book,” said the second. “Not that she needs help being offensive, but a few of those jokes ought to alienate her from just about everybody.”
“Yeah,” said the third, “well I’ve got something in store for her, but I’m gonna have to wait until a chance presents itself.”
Of course Christina took the stuff she was given and read the joke book on the way back. Everybody she passed became offended as she spewed religious, sexual, and racial slures to all. By day’s end, nobody wanted to talk to Christina or her mother who seemed to bray at every joke.
Now Diedre was really pissed. Somehow this was Penelope’s fault and she wanted more than ever to bring sorrow to her husband’s daughter who seemed prettier every day to those around her. In the end, the best she could come up with was putting a kettle over the fire and boiling some yarn. When it was done, she put it over Penelope’s shoulders, gave her an ax, and told her to go out to the frozen river, cut a hole in the ice and rinse the yarn.
Obediently she went to the river and began to chop a hole in the ice. While she was chopping, a bitchin’ snowmobile came along. Tommy, the guy in charge of the compound in the valley motored up. He killed the engine and asked, “Who are you, and what the hell are you doing out here alone in the freezing cold?”
“My name is Penelope and I’m rinsing this yarn in the cold water of the river like my stepmother told me to.”
Tommy felt sorry for the girl and knew right away by how pretty she was that this was the girl those three crazy dwarfs had told him about.
“Would you like to ride away with me?” he asked, holding up a fur-lined parka and patting the seat of his snowmobile.
“Oh yes, with all my heart,” Penelope said, for she really wanted to be away from her stepmother and stepsister. Plus, her dad didn’t seem to have a clue as to what was happening. He was totally whipped. And what really blew Penelope away was that her stepmother wasn’t even all that.
She climbed on to the snowmobile and rode away with Tommy. When he reached the compound there was a party. A short time later the two got married and the three dwarfs even showed up with this lace dress studded with pearls that fit Penelope perfectly and made her the most beautiful bride ever. A year later, Penelope gave birth to a son.
By then, most of the folks up at the lodge had heard about this compound and moved in. Unfortunately, Penelope’s dad was bitten by a zombie shortly after that first winter thaw. Meanwhile Diedre and Christina moved in, but stayed out of sight, not wanting Penelope to know they were there. They seethed everytime they saw her walk past. It seemed that the whole community treated her like a queen.
One day, when Tommy and a bunch of the men went out on a scavenger run the wicked woman and her ugly daughter grabbed Penelope. They took her to a wall and tossed her over and into the rushing river below. Then, the obscenely ugly and offensive Christina climbed in to Penelope’s bed and Diedre helped cover her up so that you couldn’t see her face.
When Tommy came home and was anxious to see his wife, Diedre told him that the young woman was ill and that she
was a nurse that had been called in to help. “Keep quiet, she needs plenty of sleep.”
Tommy thought nothing of it and made himself comfortable on the couch until morning. He went in to check on her and see if she needed anything. The first thing she said was this nasty joke that had something to do with putting babies in a blender feet first in order to see their expression.
“What the hell’s wrong with her?” Tommy asked Diedre who had rushed in and shoo’d him out of the room.
“She’s delirious,” Diedre said. “She’ll be better soon.”
That night one of the youngsters of the compound was playing around by the grate where the river exited the place through the wall. A voice called to him:
“What is Tommy doing now?
Sleepest thou, or wakest thou?”
The boy knew there was something weird about how the voice spoke, but he couldn’t place it. He’d heard somebody recite some poetry one day using funny words like that. Then the voice spoke again:
“Are there strangers afoot in his house?”
The kid thought it over and tried to mimic the style:
“Yay, an old hag with a face like a mouse.”
The voice asked:
“And what of his child sweet?”
The boy answered:
“He’s in his cradle fast asleep.”
Then a familiar face pressed against the grate. The boy recognized Penelope right away. She was about to speak when the moan of a nearby zombie made her take off. He watched her dash into some woods with a few of the slow-moving undead on her heels.
He snuck back to his house and considered saying something, but he was worried that he would get in trouble for being out at night when he wasn’t supposed to be. That’s the logic young people use sometimes. Still, he continued to sneak out the next few nights. On the third he heard the voice again. This time, there was no poetic phrasing.
“Tell Tommy that I’m out here and he needs to come get me. And let him know that my bitch of a stepmother and her skanky daughter are in there, and that they did this to me,” Penelope cried.
Tommy came on the run and hauled Penelope back over the wall. He asked why she hadn’t tried to get in during the day. Penelope made some weak excuse about it being too risky to try and get past the zombies in the daylight. Tommy didn’t care, he was just happy to have his wife back and he came up with a plan to deal with Diedre and Christina.
When they returned home, he told Penelope to stay hidden in the attic until the baby’s christening on Sunday. After he laid out his plan, she agreed.
After the christening, Tommy casually posed the question to Diedre, “What should be done to a person if they were to kidnap you and toss you over the wall into the river and amongst the hungry zombies?”
Not being very bright, Diedre answered hastily, “They should be shut up in a barrel studded with nails and rolled down the hill into the water.”
“You’ve just pronounced your own sentence,” Tommy proclaimed.
He sent for just such a barrel and Diedre was shoved in with her daughter. Just before the lid was hammered into place, one of the dwarfs showed up and dropped a fully animated zombie’s head into the barrel. The screams could still be heard for some time as it rolled down the hill and floated away.
14
Self-Centered
Based on:
Die drei Spinnerinnen
Before that terrible day when that first zombie rose and started the apocalypse, there was this girl who, while quite beautiful, never lifted a finger to help others. Nothing her mother said did a bit of good. On the day that the apocalypse really got in full swing with legions of undead starting to mass in every city in the world, the mother finally lost it. She took all the power cords for the computer and television and confiscated the girl’s cell phone. This sent the girl into a tantrum. She yelled and screamed and wept.
It just so happened that a National Guard detachment was clearing the neighborhood, evacuating everybody to a nearby FEMA shelter. Some of the soldiers heard the ruckus. Unfortunately, so did a pack of nearby zombies. The soldiers went up to the house thinking that the trouble was inside and didn’t see what was coming up from behind.
“Open up, ma’am,” one of the men called as he pounded on the door.
The mother flung open the door and found herself looking down the barrel of an M16. While they were asking what was going on, the pack of zombies stumbled and staggered closer.
The mother was embarrassed to admit that her daughter was so lazy that she wouldn’t lift a finger to help pack for their impending evacuation. All she wanted to do is chat with and text her friends.
“I can’t get her to leave,” the woman blurted. “She is so concerned for her friends that she is trying to make certain everybody she knows is finding their way to safety.”
Meanwhile, the zombies crept closer.
“Well,” said the squad leader, “we can’t have people staying behind. Perhaps you should let us take her into custody. I think, with situations being what they are, we can perhaps find a position for her in our communications center.”
The mother was relieved and stepped aside to let the soldiers in. The girl looked up at the soldiers who stood in her living room bristling with weapons.
“We’re bringing you back with us to HQ,” the squad leader said. “Your mom says you are pretty good with social networking. Well, right now we can use every bit of help out there. We’ll set you up with a top of the line system and have you get out updates and advisories to those in the outlying area.”
As they were walking outside, the mob of zombies that had been closing in attacked. It was bloody, violent, and chaotic. The soldiers were swarmed and fell under the onslaught. The squad leader shoved his radio in the girl’s hands as he pushed her back into the house.
“Warn HQ!” he screamed as a wall of arms and hands wrapped around him and pulled him into the mob.
The girl slammed the doors on the screams of the dying and the moans of the undead. She ran upstairs and didn’t stop until she climbed into the attic and pulled up the fold-down ladder. She sat; alone, afraid, and in the darkness. It didn’t seem as if she’d ever be able to stop crying. And that is where she stayed for days. She tried to use the radio, but between the darkness and the multitude of buttons and switches, she really had no idea how to operate the giant handset.
On the third day, as dehydration and desperation set in, she pushed down the hatch that led to the attic just enough to peek out in the hallway. It was clear and she climbed down. She hurried into the bathroom and saw what a mess she’d become. She was relieved to discover that the water still ran and that it was still hot. After a quick shower, she spent an hour on her hair and another on her make-up.
When she was done, she finally went to her bedroom and looked out on the neighborhood. It was a disaster area. Bodies…parts of bodies…garbage. The streets were littered with everything imaginable, and a few things that weren’t. Was that a refrigerator? Then she saw three women coming down the road. The first looked to have had her entire foot ripped off. The second seemed to have no lower lip. There was a thick flap of meat draped down over the bloody chin. The third seemed mostly okay, and it took the girl a moment to realize that she was missing the thumb on her left hand.
Of course the girl had been so self-absorbed in the days before, that she was unaware of what was happening in the wide world. While it was obvious that there was something wrong, the girl had no idea what. She thought it had something to do with crazy people, but these three women didn’t look crazy. If anything, they looked a bit slow.
So, when they stopped outside her window, she tapped on the glass to get their attention. The three women looked up. There was something about their eyes that creeped the girl out, but she was a bit desperate. She was hungry and lonely and scared.
The three women stumbled across the yard and, by the time she got downstairs to the door, she could hear them scratching and pawing. That seemed
just a bit weird. She flung open the door and staggered back a few steps when she got not only a close-up look…but a whiff as well.
The three staggered in grasping for the young lass. They dragged her to the ground and the first tore at her stomach, eventually ripping the soft skin of her belly open and drawing out a strand of intestine. The second was drooling all over the pile of steaming guts, long ropes of it hung from the remnants of that ripped lower lip. The third plunged the nub of its thumb into the girl’s ever-widening abdominal hole and tore it wider so that the three could grab handfuls and stuff their blood-smeared faces.
A few men hiding out in the basement of a nearby house heard the screams. Despite the risk to their lives, they emerged with a variety of weapons, including some that they had discovered scattered about when that squad of soldiers had been taken out by a bunch of zombies a few days ago.
They followed the sounds to a house just two streets over. The first thing that they noticed when they reached the open door was a pile of still-steaming guts. It made them all gag just a little. Then they saw the three zombies hunched over a body, feasting on the tender bits.
They moved in quick with baseball bats and the like and quickly beat down the zombies. When they were done, one of the men held back the others when he recognized who it was on the floor.
“Guys, it’s that stuck-up little ginch that used to strut up and down the streets like her shit didn’t stink,” the one man said to the others.
“Oh yeah,” another agreed. “Didn’t her mom have like two jobs or something just so that spoiled little bitch could have whatever she wanted while lazing about and not lifting a finger?”
“I once saw her elbow past that sweet little old lady, Miss Magillacutty, in the coffee shop,” said another.
Gruesomely Grimm Zombie Tales Page 9
